Variants of Handball – Field and Czech Handball

As we have discussed in our previous article on All you want to know about Handball, there are two variants of Handball the Field Handball and the Czech Handball. We are looking at both the variants in this article.

What is Field Handball?

The Field handball is also known as outdoor handball or grass handball. It was the original form of the current handball which is part of the summer Olympics. The grass handball is played on a grass field as its name suggests. The measurement of the playing area is same of a normal hard court surface. The field has been divided in 3 equal sections. The game has been played with the same ball as it is in the indoor variant of the game and played between 11 players with two reserves and the two halves are of 30 minutes each.

There is no difference as such between a normal handball game and a field handball game.

What is Czech Handball?

This variant of the handball is similar to the current indoor handball and it was founded in 1905 in Prague the then Czechoslovakia. It is still played in both Czech Republic and Slovakia. It has been learnt that the first time the game of Czech handball was mentioned by one Vaclav Caras who was a teacher in Prague in a sports journal in Brno in 1905. The rules were soon developed by another set of teachers called Klenka and Kristof. Kristof’s efforts made the Czech handball association in existence and official rules were made public in 1908.

There is a huge difference in the rules between Czech handball and the current indoor handball. There are three player positions specified in the Czech handball. There are 7 players each on two sides and they play under a specific position called, goalkeeper (1), defender (1), halfback (2) and forward (3). In Czech handball a player can not hold the ball for more than two seconds, he has to throw the ball upon the head or has to bounce the ball back to ground with limitation of two times maximum but there is no limit in steps. There are also limitations for the goalkeepers and defenders while stopping the attempt to goal. A player who has breached any rule can be sent off for minimum of five minutes or maximum of ten minutes.